Judge — September 1937 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

OLD MR. STOEVER OX of the queerest things that ever happened to me was old Mr. Stoever. I met him shortly after I had drifted into the valley, years ago when I was little more than a kid. He lived about twenty miles south of where I had located a homestead, on the ranch of his granddaughter. The minute I saw old Mr. Stoever 1 liked him. A big, rawboned old fellow, about seventy five, still hale and hearty, with pink cheeks and a white, clean beard, and the kindest pale blue eyes in the world, usually a smile in them. A gentle spoken old fellow, quietly humor- ous, with a soft voice, a trace of Missouri still in it. I hadn't known him long before I discovered that he was not only gentle by nature, but had a carefully worked out hilosophy as well. He not only recoiled instinctively from violence and slaughter, but he knew why. He knew why because in his youth, circumstances had forced him to become an ex, slaughter. He had rt in violence and n only eighteen when the Civil War broke out, and pretty soon, there he was at the front. And afterwards he had been one of Sherman's “bummers” on Sherman's march to the sea, and when the Civil War ended, he had drifted West and had been a buffalo hunter, and a scout, and an Indian fighter. ‘67 ‘VE seen ‘em laying there scalped,” I he would say redectively, “Yee. sit, dozens of ‘em. That kinda queer, dark patch on top of their heads!" And then ¢ would go into a discussion of how useless, most of the time, it was to kill men, or even animals. “T've got so,” he would say, with a deprecating like smile, “I kinda hate even to kill a fly. Them little fellers, 1 dessay, enjoys life in their own way.” He was the gentlest and kindest old man I ever met. I remember one day when he came uj to see me, I was hunting ground squirrels with a .22 back of the corrals. Nowada I don’t much like to kill things myself. I've shot too much big game. And like a lot of big game hunters, I'm sick of it. You have to be in pretty bad shape not to hit a thing when you have it between the sights of a modern precision rifle, and then down it goes with a crash... something you can’t make or put to. gether again. But I don't like ground irrels . . . et gophers; picket pins. They're dirty, and destructive, and they're cannibals, Mr. Stoever squatted on his left heel, cowboy fashion—he didn’t seem to have a stiff joint in him—and watched me. I hit.a ground sguicrel and broke its back, and the small thing screamed and when I went to give it the coup de grace, twisted up, covered with bl and knocked out of shape, and put its paws together, the way they do, and begged for life. Mr. Stoever didn’t like me for a long time afterwards. I could tell by his silence and the look in his eyes. "THERE was one story he told me at least five times. How, when he was with Sherman, he and five other troopers caught a young Confederate officer leav- ing his plantation at dawn after a secret visit to his wife. The young Confederate officer started to run and they shot him just as he was crossing a fence, and he hung there, his gold braid glittering in the sunrise. The third year I didn’t see much of Mr. Stoever, I was too busy on the ranch, and then, one August morning, when I was down country I rode over to his cabin. There was a small crowd there. The Sheriff, and a couple of deputies, and the doctor, and some neighbors, and Mr. Stoever’s granddaughter, wringing her hands and crying. Inside, Mr. Stoever, tied with ropes, was sitting sullen and silent. “What's the matter?” I asked. “Why, he shot Will Bedford this morning.” “Shot him! Good God!" “Yes. Will dropped in to see him about a horse, and be come out a run- nin’, his hair on end, a rifle in his hand, and shot him. Will told us before he + died. He never knew what it was all about.” They put old Mr. Stoever in the asylum where he was very happy, no doubt, telling the other inmates and the guards about the Confederate officer and 10" yw useless it was. AUTILE while ago I saw a movie called, “They Gave Him A Gun”. It wasn’t a very good movie, but it had a good idea. The hero had been a boy of eighteen when he had enlisted for the last war. He had been taught bayonet drill . . you know, that final twist! like butter! . . and rifle fire, and then he had gone overseas, where he had killed so many men that it didn’t seem queer to him when he came back to keep on kill- ing them. “— I remembered all about old Mr. Stoever when I saw that movie. —STRUTHERS Burt. Judge comicbooks.com